Dans cet épisode :

• Les trois axiomes fondamentaux de l’Objectivisme
• La perception sensorielle
• Entité et causalité
• La primauté de l’existence
• Le libre arbitre
• L’homme face à la réalité métaphysique
• L’espace, le temps, l’infini

Sources

Lorsqu’aucun nom n’est précisé, l’auteur des propos est Ayn Rand. Si jamais un propos tenu au cours du podcast vous semble avoir besoin d’être sourcé et ne l’est pas ici, contactez-moi, je ferai mon possible pour compléter ce manque. Pour rappel : l’ouvrage Objectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand de Leonard Peikoff, que je cite à maintes reprises, est basé sur son cours de 1976 The Philosophy of Objectivism, qui a été approuvé par Rand comme étant une présentation exacte de sa philosophie.

Introduction

[00:25] L’être en tant qu’être

• ARISTOTE, Métaphysique (Flammarion, trad. Duminil & Jaulin, 2008), Livre Γ, 1, p. 145, [1003a21] : « Il y a une science qui étudie l’être, en tant qu’être, et les propriétés qui appartiennent à cet être par soi. Cette science n’est identique à aucune de celles qu’on appelle partielles, car aucune des autres n’examine en totalité l’être, en tant qu’être, mais elles en découpent une partie et étudient à son sujet le coïncident par soi, comme font les sciences mathématiques. Or, puisque nous cherchons les principes, c’est-à-dire les causes les plus hautes, à l’évidence il est nécessaire qu’ils relèvent de ce qui est une nature par soi. Si donc ceux qui cherchaient les éléments des êtres, eux aussi, cherchaient ces principes, il est nécessaire aussi que les éléments soient éléments de l’être, non par coïncidence, mais en tant qu’ils sont des êtres. C’est pourquoi il nous faut, nous aussi, saisir les premières causes de l’être, en tant qu’être. »

[00:32] Ce qu’est la métaphysique

• « The Psycho-epistemology of Art » dans The Romantic Manifesto (Second Revised Edition, New York, Signet / New American Library, 1975), chap. 1, p. 7 : « Metaphysics — the science that deals with the fundamental nature of reality — involves man’s widest abstractions. »
• « Philosophy: Who Needs It« , dans Philosophy: Who Needs It (New York, Meridian / Dutton Signet) 1984, chap. 1, p. 3 : « These answers are the province of metaphysics — the study of existence as such or, in Aristotle’s words, of “being qua being” — the basic branch of philosophy. »
• PEIKOFF Leonard, Objectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand (New York, Dutton, 1991),  chap. 1, « Reality », p. 3 : « Metaphysics is the branch of philosophy that studies the nature of the universe as a whole. »

Les trois axiomes fondamentaux

[02:33] La métaphysique comme point de départ

• « Philosophical Detection », dans Philosophy: Who Needs It, op. cit., 1984, chap. 2, p. 12 : « In philosophy, the fundamentals are metaphysics and epistemology. »
• Ibid, p. 13 : « As a philosophical detective, you must remember that nothing is self-evident except the material of sensory perception—and that an irreducible primary is a fact which cannot be analyzed (i.e., broken into components) or derived from antecedent facts. You must examine your own convictions and any idea or theory you study, by asking: Is this an irreducible primary—and, if not, what does it depend on? You must ask the same question about any answer you obtain, until you do come to an irreducible primary: if a given idea contradicts a primary, the idea is false. This process will lead you to the field of metaphysics and epistemology—and you will discover in what way every aspect of man’s knowledge depends on that field and stands or falls with it. »

[03:30] Énoncer ses axiomes

• « The Physical World » dans Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology (Expanded Second edition, New York, Meridian / Penguin Books USA Inc., 1990) Excerpts from the Epistemology Workshops, p. 251 : « That was my original “Rand’s Razor”: that in an ideal Atlantis, every philosopher would be asked to name his axioms before being permitted to utter a proposition. »
• PEIKOFF, Leonard Objectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand (op. cit.), chap. 4 « Objectivity », p. 139 : « Rand’s Razor is addressed to anyone who enters the field of philosophy. It states: name your primaries. Identify your starting points, including the concepts you take to be irreducible, and then establish that these are objective axioms. Put negatively: do not begin to philosophize in midstream. Do not begin with some derivative concept or issue, while ignoring its roots, however much such issue interests you. »

[03:56] Les trois axiomes de base : existence, conscience, identité

• « Axiomatic Concepts » dans Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology (op. cit.), chap. 6, p. 55 : « The first and primary axiomatic concepts are “existence,” “identity” (which is a corollary of “existence’’) and “consciousness.” One can study what exists and how consciousness functions; but one cannot analyze (or “prove”) existence as such, or consciousness as such. These are irreducible primaries. »

[04:11] Antiquité des axiomes fondamentaux

• Voir PARMÉNIDE, Le Poème (traduction de Paul Tannery), vers 490 av. J.C. : « Allons, je vais te dire et tu vas entendre / quelles sont les seules voies de recherche ouvertes à l’intelligence / l’une, que l’être est, que le non-être n’est pas / chemin de la certitude, qui accompagne la vérité / l’autre, que l’être n’est pas : et que le non être est forcément / route où je te le dis, tu ne dois aucunement te laisser séduire. / Tu ne peux avoir connaissance de ce qui n’est pas, tu ne peux le saisir ni l’exprimer / car le pensé et l’être sont une même chose. […] II faut penser et dire que ce qui est / car il y a être / il n’y a pas de non-être ; voilà ce que je t’ordonne de proclamer. »
• Voir ARISTOTE, Métaphysique (op. cit.), vers 330 av. J.C., Livre Γ, 3, p. 153, [1005b15] : « En effet, le principe que doit nécessairement posséder celui qui acquiert la connaissance de n’importe lequel des êtres n’est pas une hypothèse ; ce qu’apprend nécessairement à connaître celui qui apprend à connaître quoi que ce soit, nécessairement aussi il le possède au départ. […] Quel est ce principe ? Après cela, énonçons-le : c’est qu’il est impossible que le même appartienne et n’appartienne pas en même temps à la même chose et du même point de vue (et toutes les autres spécifications que nous pourrions ajouter, qu’elles soient ajoutées contre les difficultés dialectiques). […] C’est pourquoi tous ceux qui font une démonstration remontent à cette opinion dernière, car elle est par nature le principe de tous les autres axiomes aussi. »
• Voir SAINT AUGUSTIN, La Cité de Dieu (traduction de Émile Saisset), vers 417, Livre XI, chap. XXVI : « Comment donc me puis-je tromper, en croyant que je suis, du moment qu’il est certain que je suis, si je suis trompé ? Ainsi, puisque je serais toujours, moi qui serais trompé, quand il serait vrai que je me tromperais, il est indubitable que je ne puis me tromper, lorsque je crois que je suis. Il suit de là que, quand je connais que je connais, je ne me trompe pas non plus ; car je connais que j’ai cette connaissance de la même manière que je connais que je suis. »

[04:26] L’existence existe

• Atlas Shrugged (35th Anniversary Edition, New York, Dutton, 1992), p. 1015 : « We, the men of the mind, are now on strike against you in the name of a single axiom […]: the axiom that existence exists.
• Interview d’Ayn Rand dans Playboy, mars 1964, p. 36 : — « What are the basic premises of Objectivism? Where does it begin? — It begins with the axiom that existence exists… »
• Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology (op. cit.), « Foreword to the First Edition », p. 3 : … one must remember the axiom: Existence exists. (This, incidentally, is a way of translating into the form of a proposition, and thus into the form of an axiom, the primary fact which is existence.)
• PEIKOFF Leonard, Objectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand (op. cit.),  chap. 1, « Reality », p. 4 : « The first thing to say about that which is is simply: it is. As Parmenides in ancient Greece formulated the principle: what is, is. Or, in Ayn Rand’s words: existence exists. (“Existence” here is a collective noun, denoting the sum of existents.) This axiom does not tell us anything about the nature of existents; it merely underscores the fact that they exist. »

[05:40] Axiome d’existence et existence du monde physique

• « The Physical World », dans Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology (op. cit.), Excerpts from the Epistemology Workshops, p. 245-246 : « When you say “existence exists,” you are not saying that the physical world exists, because the literal meaning of the term “physical world” involves a very sophisticated piece of scientific knowledge at which logically and chronologically you would have to arrive much later. »

[06:11] Négation de l’existence par Gorgias

• GORGIAS, Sur le non-être ou sur la nature, cité par SEXTUS EMPIRICUS, Adversus mathematicos (§ 65-87), dans VOILQUIN Jean (traduction, introduction et notes), Les Penseurs grecs avant Socrate, 1964, p. 218-220.
• Voir aussi sur ce blog : « Rien n’existe » : Gorgias ou la naissance de l’humour absurde.

[06:44] Citation d’Ayn Rand sur l’existence et la conscience

• Atlas Shrugged (op. cit.), p. 1015 : « Existence exists—and the act of grasping that statement implies two corollary axioms: that something exists which one perceives and that one exists possessing consciousness, consciousness being the faculty of perceiving that which exists. »

[07:20] La conscience de quelque chose

• Atlas Shrugged (op. cit.), p. 1015 : « If nothing exists, there can be no consciousness: a consciousness with nothing to be conscious of is a contradiction in terms. A consciousness conscious of nothing but itself is a contradiction in terms: before it could identify itself as consciousness, it had to be conscious of something. If that which you claim to perceive does not exist, what you possess is not consciousness. »
• « Concept of Consciousness » dans Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology (op. cit.), chap. 4, p. 29 : « Directly or indirectly, every phenomenon of consciousness is derived from one’s awareness of the external world. Some object, i.e., some content, is involved in every state of awareness. Extrospection is a process of cognition directed outward—a process of apprehending some existent(s) of the external world. Introspection is a process of cognition directed inward—a process of apprehending one’s own psychological actions in regard to some existent(s) of the external world, such actions as thinking, feeling, reminiscing, etc. It is only in relation to the external world that the various actions of a consciousness can be experienced, grasped, defined or communicated. Awareness is awareness of something. A content-less state of consciousness is a contradiction in terms. »

[07:47] Axiome d’identité

• Atlas Shrugged (op. cit.), p. 1016 : « To exist is to be something, as distinguished from the nothing of non-existence, it is to be an entity of a specific nature made of specific attributes. Centuries ago, the man who was—no matter what his errors —the greatest of your philosophers, has stated the formula defining the concept of existence and the rule of all knowledge: A is A. A thing is itself. […] Whatever you choose to consider, be it an object, an attribute or an action, the law of identity remains the same. A leaf cannot be a stone at the same time, it cannot be all red and all green at the same time, it cannot freeze and burn at the same time. A is A. »

[08:56] L’existence est l’identité

• Atlas Shrugged (op. cit.), p. 1016 : « To exist is to be something […] it is to be an entity of a specific nature made of specific attributes. […] A is A. A thing is itself. You have never grasped the meaning of his statement. I am here to complete it: Existence is Identity… »
• PEIKOFF Leonard, Objectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand (op. cit.),  chap. 1, « Reality », p. 6-7 : « Ayn Rand offers a new formulation of this axiom: existence is identity. She does not say “existence has identity”— which might suggest that identity is a feature separable from existence (as a coat of paint is separable from the house that has it). The point is that to be is to be something. Existence and identity are indivisible; either implies the other. If something exists, then something exists; and if there is a something, then there is a something. The fundamental fact cannot be broken in two. »

[10:07] Les axiomes sont connus par la perception

• « Axiomatic Concepts« , dans Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology (op. cit.), chap. 6, p. 55-56 : « Existence, identity and consciousness are concepts in that they require identification in conceptual form. Their peculiarity lies in the fact that they are perceived or experienced directly, but grasped conceptually. They are implicit in every state of awareness, from the first sensation to the first percept to the sum of all concepts. After the first discriminated sensation (or percept), man’s subsequent knowledge adds nothing to the basic facts designated by the terms “‘existence,” “identity,” “consciousness”—these facts are contained in any single state of awareness… »
• PEIKOFF Leonard, Objectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand (op. cit.),  chap. 1, « Reality », p. 8 : « One knows that the axioms are true not by inference of any kind, but by sense perception. When one perceives a tomato, for example, there is no evidence that it exists, beyond the fact that one perceives it; there is no evidence that it is something, beyond the fact that one perceives it; and there is no evidence that one is aware, beyond the fact that one is perceiving it. Axioms are perceptual self-evidencies. There is nothing to be said in their behalf except: look at reality. »

[10:26] On ne peut pas prouver les axiomes

• « Axiomatic Concepts« , dans Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology (op. cit.), chap. 6, p. 55 : « [An axiom] is the fundamentally given and directly perceived or experienced, which requires no proof or explanation, but on which all proofs and explanations rest. […] One can study what exists and how consciousness functions; but one cannot analyze (or “prove”) existence as such, or consciousness as such. These are irreducible primaries. (An attempt to “prove” them is self-contradictory: it is an attempt to “prove” existence by means of nonexistence, and consciousness by means of unconsciousness.) »
• PEIKOFF Leonard, Objectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand (op. cit.),  chap. 1, « Reality », p. 8 : « Being implicit from the beginning, existence, consciousness, and identity are outside the province of proof. Proof is the derivation of a conclusion from antecedent knowledge, and nothing is antecedent to axioms. Axioms are the starting points of cognition, on which all proofs depend. »

[10:55] On ne peut pas réfuter les axiomes

• Atlas Shrugged (op. cit.), p. 1040 : « An axiom is a proposition that defeats its opponents by the fact that they have to accept it and use it in the process of any attempt to deny it. Let the caveman who does not choose to accept the axiom of identity, try to present his theory without using the concept of identity or any concept derived from it—let the anthropoid who does not choose to accept the existence of nouns, try to devise a language without nouns, adjectives or verbs—let the witch doctor who does not choose to accept the validity of sensory perception, try to prove it without using the data he obtained by sensory perception —let the head-hunter who does not choose to accept the validity of logic, try to prove it without using logic… »
• PEIKOFF Leonard, Objectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand (op. cit.),  chap. 1, « Reality », p. 9-10 : « The three axioms I have been discussing have a built-in protection against all attacks: they must be used and accepted by everyone, including those who attack them and those who attack the concept of the self-evident. […] Existence, consciousness, identity are presupposed by every statement and by every concept… […] In the act of voicing his objection, therefore, the objector has conceded the case. In any act of challenging or denying the three axioms, a man reaffirms them, no matter what the particular content of his challenge. »

[11:32] La connaissance du monde n’est pas déduite des axiomes

• Lettre à John Hospers du 3 janvier 1961, dans BERLINER Michael S. (éd.), Letters of Ayn Rand (New York, Plume, 1997), « Letters to a philosopher », p. 526-527 : « No, “A is A” will not tell you whether this is red or blue. It will “merely” tell you that it is. It will bring you to the stage where you will be able to grasp that “this” exists and that “this” has attributes and that you can differentiate between what is red and what is blue, and that you may not claim that “this” is red and blue at the same time and in the same respect. »
• PEIKOFF Leonard, « Objectivism Versus Rationalism and Empiricism » dans Understanding Objectivism, Lecture Nine, p. 283 : « The three axioms of Objectivism—existence, consciousness, identity—are not starting points from which you can deduce conclusions. If all you know is “Existence exists,” and you sit and stare at that, you will never get any further. Those axioms are the foundations of knowledge, which means they enable us then to look at reality, to have actual experience that we then have to conceptualize, induce, integrate, and so on. »
• GOTTHELF Allan, On Ayn Rand (Belmont, CA : Wadsworth/Thomson Learning, 2000), chap. 4 « Metaphysics », p. 43, n. 17 : « It is worth mentioning that she certainly does not hold that all human knowledge is deduced, rationalist-style, from these axioms. In Aristotle’s language, she holds that these axioms are, in effect, that by which we reason, not that from which we do. Reason operates, directly or indirectly, only on sensory-perceptual data, as we shall see in a later chapter. »

[11:46] L’Objectivisme n’est pas rationaliste

• « For the New Intellectual », dans For the New Intellectual (New York, Signet / New American Library, 1963), p. 27 : « The form of that absurd concession was the philosophers’ ultimate division into two camps: those who claimed that man obtains his knowledge of the world by deducing it exclusively from concepts, which come from inside his head and are not derived from the perception of physical facts (the Rationalists)—and those who claimed that man obtains his knowledge from experience, which was held to mean: by direct perception of immediate facts, with no recourse to concepts (the Empiricists). To put it more simply: those who joined the Witch Doctor, by abandoning reality—and those who clung to reality, by abandoning their mind. »
• « Question Period », dans PEIKOFF Leonard, The Philosophy of Objectivism (séminaire, 1976), leçon 12, questions-réponses (intervention de Rand), enregistrement Youtube [02:00:55—02:06:17] : « Somebody […] claims that a professor at Columbia University said she heard me make a speech at Columbia in which I proved that the creation of material goods could occur only under a capitalist system, and that, from this, I concluded that Sputnik did not exist. […] I would never say such a thing because, observe: this is rationalism. The idea of proving something out of context without reference to reality, simply proving, by syllogism that something exist or doesn’t exist. I never employ this method. […] Therefore tell that lady that rationalism is a very bad philosophical disease… »
• Voir aussi : Objectivisme et rationalisme pour plus de sources.

[12:35] La métaphysique comme facettes des axiomes fondamentaux

• PEIKOFF, Leonard Objectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand (op. cit.), chap. 1 « Reality », p. 16 : « In fact, the essence of metaphysics, according to Objectivism, is the step-by-step development of the corollaries of the existence axiom. »

La perception sensorielle

[13:42] Citation d’Ayn Rand sur la conscience et la perception

• Voir la source « La conscience de quelque chose » plus haut.

[14:29] La perception comme seul contact direct avec le monde

• « Kant vs Sullivan » dans Philosophy: Who Needs It (op. cit.) 1984, chap. 9, p. 90 : « Man’s senses are his only direct cognitive contact with reality and, therefore, his only source of information. Without sensory evidence, there can be no concepts; without concepts, there can be no language; without language, there can be no knowledge and no science. »

[14:36] La perception sensorielle comme irréductible

• « Cognition and Measurement » dans Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology (op. cit.), chap. 1, p. 5 : « …the base of all of man’s knowledge is the perceptual stage. »
• BRANDEN Nathaniel, « Mental Health versus Mysticism » dans The Virtue of Selfishness (New York, Signet / New American Library, 1964), chap. 2, p. 42 : « The foundation and starting point of man’s thinking are his sensory perceptions… »

[14:41] La validité des sens comme corollaire de la conscience

• PEIKOFF, Leonard Objectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand (op. cit.), chap. 2 « Sense Perception and Volition », p. 39 : « The validity of the senses is not an independent axiom; it is a corollary of the fact of consciousness. […] If man is conscious of that which is, then his means of awareness are means of awareness, i.e., are valid. »

[14:54] Irréfutabilité de la validité des sens

• Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology (op. cit.), 1990, « Foreword to the First Edition », p. 3 : « For instance, I do not include here a discussion of the validity of man’s senses—since the arguments of those who attack the senses are merely variants of the fallacy of the “stolen concept.” » [Voir épisode suivant sur le « stolen concept ».]
• SALMIERI Gregory, « The Objectivist Epistemology« , dans A Companion to Ayn Rand (Chichester / Malden, MA : John Wiley & Sons, 2016), p. 299 : « [H]er objection to views that deny “the validity of the senses” is that they are “merely variants of the fallacy of the ‘stolen concept,’” since the senses are the source of the knowledge needed to give meaning to the terms in which such views are formulated. »
• PEIKOFF, Leonard Objectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand (op. cit.), chap. 2 « Sense Perception and Volition », p. 39 : « One cannot affirm consciousness while denying its primary form, which makes all the others possible. Just as any attack on consciousness negates itself, so does any attack on the senses. If the senses are not valid, neither are any concepts, including the ones used in the attack. »

[15:32] Défaillance du jugement vs défaillance de la perception

• Atlas Shrugged (op. cit.), p. 1041 : « The day when [a savage] grasps […] that his senses do not provide him with automatic knowledge in separate snatches independent of context, but only with the material of knowledge, which his mind must learn to integrate—the day when he grasps that his senses cannot deceive him, that physical objects cannot act without causes, that his organs of perception are physical and have no volition, no power to invent or to distort, that the evidence they give him is an absolute, but his mind must learn to understand it, his mind must discover the nature, the causes, the full context of his sensory material, his mind must identify the things that he perceives—that is the day of his birth as a thinker and scientist. »
• PEIKOFF Leonard, Objectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand (op. cit.), chap. 2 « Sense Perception and Volition », p. 40 : « A so-called sensory illusion, such as a stick in water appearing bent, is not a perceptual error. […] It is the task not of the senses but of the mind to analyze the evidence and identify the causes at work (which may require the discovery of complex scientific knowledge). If a casual observer were to conclude that the stick actually bends in water, such a snap judgment would be a failure on the conceptual level, a failure of thought, not of perception. »

[16:09] Les hallucinations ou les rêves ne sont pas des perceptions

• Lettre d’Ayn Rand à John Hospers du 3 janvier 1961, dans BERLINER Michael S. (éd.), Letters of Ayn Rand, (op. cit.), « Letters to a philosopher », p. 521 : « You cite the example of hallucinations as “perceiving incorrectly.” But hallucinations are not perceptions at all; they are caused, not by an action of the senses, but by a malfunction of the brain. »
• PEIKOFF Leonard, Objectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand (op. cit.), chap. 2 « Sense Perception and Volition », p. 41 : « Once a mind acquires a certain content of sensory material, it can, as in the case of dreams, contemplate its own content rather than external reality. This is not sense perception at all, but a process of turning inward, made possible by the fact that the individual, through perception, first acquired some sensory contents. Nor, as Aristotle observed, is there any difficulty in distinguishing dreams from perception. The concept of “dream” has meaning only because it denotes a contrast to wakeful awareness. If a man were actually unable to recognize the latter state, the word “dream” to him would be meaningless. »
• PEIKOFF Leonard, « Objectivism on the Validity of the Senses », dans History of Philosophy (séminaire, 1972), leçon 48, enregistrement Youtube [06:58-08:12] : « Don’t be confused here by the phenomenon of dreams or hallucinations. Dreams, hallucinations and equivalent phenomena are not sense perceptions. They are not examples of man sensorially perceiving something other than existence. […] In such a case, he is not engaging in sense perception at all. He is turning his consciousness in on itself and contemplating his own stored content of experiences, images, etc. Such a phenomenon is possible only because he has initially acquired this content—acquired it or, at least, its ultimate constituents—by direct perception of reality. »

[16:22] Distinguer le « quoi » et le « comment »

• PEIKOFF Leonard, « Objectivism on the Validity of the Senses », dans History of Philosophy (séminaire, 1972), leçon 48, enregistrement Youtube [20:56-21:28] : « And since this is true in any process of knowledge, we must always distinguish the object (what you know) and the how (the means by which you know it). The object is reality. The “how” determines only the form of your perception of reality. But all forms of perception are forms of perception, i.e., forms of awareness of reality. As such, all forms of perception are valid. »

[17:29] Argument kantien

• KANT, Emmanuel, Critique de la raison pure (trad. Alexandre J.-L. Delamarre et François Marty, éd. Ferdinand Alquié, Paris, Gallimard, coll. Folio/Essais), 1980, « Analytique transcendantale », chap. III, p. 307 : « … nous ne connaissons pas par la sensibilité la nature des choses en soi seulement confusément, mais nous ne la connaissons pas du tout ; et, dès que nous faisons abstraction de notre constitution subjective, l’objet représenté, avec les propriétés que lui attribuait l’intuition sensible, ne se trouve plus, ni ne peut plus se trouver nulle part, puisque c’est justement cette constitution subjective qui détermine la forme de cet objet comme phénomène. »
• « For the New Intellectual », dans For the New Intellectual (op. cit.) p. 28 : « [Kant’s] argument, in essence, ran as follows: man is limited to a consciousness of a specific nature, which perceives by specific means and no others, therefore, his consciousness is not valid; man is blind, because he has eyes—deaf, because he has ears—deluded, because he has a mind—and the things he perceives do not exist, because he perceives them. »

[18:04] L’identité de la conscience n’invalide pas les sens

• « Consciousness and Identity » dans Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology (op. cit.), chap. 8, p. 79 : « The motive of all the attacks on man’s rational faculty […] is a single, hidden premise: the desire to exempt consciousness from the law of identity. The hallmark of a mystic is the savagely stubborn refusal to accept the fact that consciousness, like any other existent, possesses identity, that it is a faculty of a specific nature, functioning through specific means. While the advance of civilization has been eliminating one area of magic after another, the last stand of the believers in the miraculous consists of their frantic attempts to regard identity as the disqualifying element of consciousness. The implicit, but unadmitted premise of the neo-mystics of modern philosophy, is the notion that only an ineffable consciousness can acquire a valid knowledge of reality, that “true” knowledge has to be causeless, i.e., acquired without any means of cognition. »

[18:44] Sur les qualités « primaires » et « secondaires »

• « The Primary-Secondary Quality Dichotomy as Fallacious » dans Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology (op. cit.), Excerpts from the Epistemology Workshops, p. 279 : « The primary-secondary quality distinction is a long philosophical tradition which I deny totally. Because there isn’t a single aspect, including length or spatial extension, which is perceived by us without means of perception. Everything we perceive is perceived by some means. […] Consider taste. It relates to the way your particular nerve ends react to certain chemicals or certain components of the things which you eat. Tastes as such do not exist apart from your sensory apparatus. But that which arouses a certain sensation of taste in you, does it exist or not? […] Certain elements in the object, when they strike your taste apparatus, your nerve endings, produce a certain sensation. Now take length. How do you become aware of length, which is usually taken as a primary quality? […] You perceive the attribute by means of your eyes, but you can also perceive it by means of touch. And both these enter your mind as certain sensations conveyed by certain kinds of nerves and nerve endings in response to certain stimuli. Therefore, if you say that taste is a “secondary quality” but length is a “primary” one, you are open to the same criticism. The primary-secondary distinction in fact starts from the idea that that which we perceive by some specific means is somehow not objective. »

Entité et causalité

[19:39] La perception du monde est faite d’entités

• « The Objectivist Ethics » dans The Virtue of Selfishness (op. cit.), chap. 1, p. 20 : « A “perception” is a group of sensations automatically retained and integrated by the brain of a living organism, which gives it the ability to be aware, not of single stimuli, but of entities, of things. »
• « Art and Cognition », dans The Romantic Manifesto, (op. cit.), chap. 4, p. 36 : « The concept “entity” is (implicitly) the start of man’s conceptual development and the building-block of his entire conceptual structure. It is by perceiving entities that man perceives the universe. »
• PEIKOFF, Leonard Objectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand (op. cit.), chap. 1 « Reality », p. 13 : « Entities constitute the content of the world men perceive; there is nothing else to observe. »

[20:07] Sens étendu du concept d’entité

• « Entities and Their Makeup » dans dans Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology (op. cit.), Excerpts from the Epistemology Workshops, p. 269-270 : « What about a square inch of ground? Is that an entity or not? You can, from an epistemological viewpoint, regard any part of an entity as a separate entity in that context. And a square inch of ground would be just that. The entity would be the whole ground; you delimit it and examine one square inch of it. In the context of your examination, it’s a specific entity, that particular inch, even though metaphysically, in reality, it’s part of many, many other inches like it. The concept of “entity” is an issue of the context in which you define your terms. So that an entity has to be a material object, but what you regard as an entity in any given statement or inquiry depends on your definitions. You can regard part of an entity as a separate entity. And in that sense all the vital organs are entities, and you have a separate science for the brain or the heart or the stomach. And in the context of that science, you study them as separate entities, never dropping the context that they are vital organs of a total entity which is a human being. »
• Ibid, p. 271 : « You are considering [society] as an entity, but you must always remember the definition of your entity— which is: a number of individual human entities living in the same geographical locality under the same laws, etc. […] You can discuss society as an entity, never forgetting that what you mean by “society” is a large number of human entities. Human beings in a society are tied together by, let’s say, political laws and by common geographical location. In discussing society, you are discussing a collection of entities tied together by certain kinds of laws. »
• PEIKOFF, Leonard Objectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand (op. cit.), chap. 1 « Reality », p. 13 : « First, however, I must offer some clarification in regard to the concept of “entity.” Since it is axiomatic, the referents of this concept can be specified only ostensively, by pointing to the things given to men in sense perception. In this case, one points to solid things with a perceivable shape, such as a rock, a person, or a table. By extension from this primary sense, “entity” may be used in various contexts to denote a vast array of existents, such as the solar system, General Motors, or the smallest subatomic particle. But all “entities” like these are reducible ultimately to combinations, components, or distinguishable aspects of “entities” in the primary sense. »

[20:42] Antériorité des entités sur les processus, actions, etc.

• « Entities and Their Makeup » dans Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology (op. cit.), Excerpts from the Epistemology Workshops, p. 264 : « Actually, I was speaking here in the Aristotelian sense of the primary “substance”—which is a very misleading term, but what he meant was that the primary existent is an entity. And then aspects of an entity can be identified mentally, but only in relation to the entity. There are no attributes without entities, there are no actions without entities. An entity is that which you perceive and which can exist by itself. Characteristics, qualities, attributes, actions, relationships do not exist by themselves. »
• PEIKOFF, Leonard Objectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand (op. cit.), chap. 1 « Reality », p. 13-14 : « The point here, however, is that none of these “categories” has metaphysical primacy; none has any independent existence; all represent merely aspects of entities. There is no “red” or “hard” apart from the crayon or book or other thing that is red or hard. “Five inches” or “six pounds” presuppose the object that extends five inches or weighs six pounds. “To the right of” or “father of” have no reality apart from the things one of which is to the right of another or is the father of another. »

[21:10] L’entité comme axiomatique

• « Art and Cognition », dans The Romantic Manifesto, (op. cit.), chap 4, p. 36 : « The concept “entity” is (implicitly) the start of man’s conceptual development and the building-block of his entire conceptual structure. »
• PEIKOFF, Leonard Objectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand (op. cit.), chap. 1 « Reality », p. 12-13 : « The concept of “entity” is an axiomatic concept, which is presupposed by all subsequent human cognition, although it is not a basic axiom. [Note, p. 463 : “Entity” is a specification or narrowing of “existent.” As such, it is not a starting point of all knowledge in the way the universals “existence,” “consciousness,” and “identity” are.] »

[21:22] Le changement comme manifestation des entités

• Atlas Shrugged (op. cit.), p. 1039 :  » …so they proclaim that there are no entities, that nothing exists but motion, and blank out the fact that motion presupposes the thing which moves, that without the concept of entity, there can be no such concept as “motion.” […] …so they proclaim that there is no law of identity, that nothing exists but change, and blank out the fact that change presupposes the concepts of what changes, from what and to what, that without the law of identity no such concept as “change” is possible. »
• BRANDEN Nathaniel, « The Stolen Concept », dans The Objectivist Newsletter, vol. 2, n° 1, janvier 1963 : « When neo-mystics challenge the concept of “entity” and announce that “naive” reason notwithstanding, all that exists is change and motion — (“There is no logical impossibility in walking occurring as an isolated phenomenon » not forming part of any such series as we call a ‘person,’” writes Bertrand Russell) — they are sweeping aside the fact that only the existence of entities makes the concepts “change” and “motion” possible; that “change” and “motion” presuppose entities which change and move; and that the man. who proposes to dispense with the concept of “entity” loses his logical right to. the concepts of “change” and “motion”: having dropped their genetic root, he no longer has any way to make them meaningful and intelligible. »

[21:56] Les actions comme manifestation des entités

• PEIKOFF, Leonard Objectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand (op. cit.), chap. 1 « Reality », p. 14 : « And—especially important in considering the law of cause and effect—there are no floating actions; there are only actions performed by entities. “Action” is the name for what entities do. “Walking” or “digesting” have no existence or possibility apart from the creature with legs that walks or the body or organ with enzymes that does the digesting. »

[22:20] Citation de Rand sur la causalité

• Atlas Shrugged (op. cit.), p. 1037 : « The law of causality is the law of identity applied to action. All actions are caused by entities. The nature of an action is caused and determined by the nature of the entities that act; a thing cannot act in contradiction to its nature. An action not caused by an entity would be caused by a zero, which would mean a zero controlling a thing, a non-entity controlling an entity, the non-existent ruling the existent… »

[23:33] Hume sur la causalité

• HUME David, Enquête sur l’entendement humain (trad. André Leroy, revue par Michelle Beyssade. Paris : GF Flammarion, 2006) section VII, deuxième partie, p. 141 : « Nous avons vainement cherché une idée de pouvoir ou de connexion nécessaire à toutes les sources, d’où, supposons-nous, nous pouvions la tirer. […] Tous les événements paraissent entièrement détachés et séparés les uns des autres. Un événement en suit un autre ; mais nous ne pouvons jamais observer aucun lien entre eux. Ils semblent être en conjonction, et non en connexion. Et comme nous ne pouvons jamais avoir l’idée d’une chose qui ne paraît jamais à nos sens externes ou à notre sens interne, la conclusion nécessaire est, semble-t-il, que nous n’avons pas du tout d’idée de connexion ou de pouvoir et que ces mots n’ont absolument aucune signification quand on les emploie dans les raisonnements philosophiques ou dans la vie courante. »
• HUME David, Traité de la nature humaine (trad. Philippe Folliot ; Chicoutimi : Les Classiques des sciences sociales, 2009), livre I, partie III, section XI « De la probabilité des chances », p. 130 : « Les philosophes, qui ont divisé la raison humaine en connaissance et probabilité, et qui ont défini la première une évidence qui naît d’une comparaison d’idées, sont obligés de comprendre tous nos arguments à partir des causes et des effets sous le terme général de probabilité. »

[23:55] La nécessité causale

• « Properties, Actions, and Causality » dans Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology (op. cit.), Excerpts from the Epistemology Workshops, p. 287-288 (au sujet de la citation d’Atlas Shrugged donnée plus haut sur la causalité) : « I […] mean that [an entity] cannot take an action which is not possible to it by its constituent nature. For instance, if you dropped that glass, it couldn’t suddenly float. If it did—what would you do as a scientist? Suppose you took that glass and dropped it, and suddenly you saw it going up instead of down. You would look for other forces operating here. You would immediately say: something is acting on that glass in a manner which is contrary to the force of gravity. Then you have to find out what that something is. You would look for new causes—namely, new phenomena, entities previously unknown to you which caused the different behavior of that glass. […] … I wanted to stress that one cannot claim causeless actions, or actions contrary to the nature of the interacting entities. I wanted to stress that actions cannot be inexplicable and causeless. If the cause lies in the nature of an entity, then it cannot do something other than what its nature makes possible. »

[24:18] La logique comme loi de la réalité

• « Philosophical Detection », dans Philosophy: Who Needs It, op. cit., 1984, chap. 2, p. 15 : « Logic is the art or skill of non-contradictory identification. Logic has a single law, the Law of Identity, and its various corollaries. If logic has nothing to do with reality, it means that the Law of Identity is inapplicable to reality. If so, then: (a) things are not what they are; (b) things can be and not be at the same time, in the same respect, i.e., reality is made up of contradictions. If so, by what means did anyone discover it? By illogical means. (This last is for sure.) »
• « The “Conflicts” of Men’s interests » dans The Virtue of Selfishness (op. cit.), chap. 2, p. 58 : « [A rational man] knows that the contradictory is the impossible, that a contradiction cannot be achieved in reality and that the attempt to achieve it can lead only to disaster and destruction. »
• « The Foundations of Objectivist Epistemology » dans The Philosophy of Objectivism (séminaire, 1976), leçon 3, enregistrement Youtube [02:09:21] : « I’d like you also to note that, as against today’s dominant philosophical schools, Objectivism holds what is called an ontological view of logic. That simply means: We hold that the laws of logic are facts of existence, as against being arbitrary linguistic conventions. »

La primauté de l’existence

[24:57] Avec Aristote

• ARISTOTE, Métaphysique, (op. cit.), Livre Γ, 5, p. 171, [1010b35] : « En effet, la sensation n’est certes pas sensation d’elle-même, mais il y a aussi autre chose, en dehors de la sensation, qui nécessairement est antérieur à la sensation ; car le moteur est par nature antérieur à ce qui est mû, et même s’ils se disent l’un relativement à l’autre, il n’est en rien moins antérieur. »

[25:12] L’existence prime sur la conscience

• Voir la longue citation d’Ayn Rand sur la primauté de l’existence issue de « The Metaphysical Versus the Man-Made » sourcée plus bas.
• PEIKOFF Leonard, Objectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand (op. cit.),  chap. 1, « Reality », p. 18-19 : « Existence, this principle [primacy of existence] declares, comes first. Things are what they are independent of consciousness—of anyone’s perceptions, images, ideas, feelings. Consciousness, by contrast, is a dependent. Its function is not to create or control existence, but to be a spectator: to look out, to perceive, to grasp that which is. […] The primacy of existence is not an independent principle. It is an elaboration, a further corollary, of the basic axioms. Existence precedes consciousness, because consciousness is consciousness of an object. »

[25:43] L’existence n’a pas besoin d’être expliquée, mais étudiée

• Night Call (émission radio de Del Shields), « The Philosophy of Ayn Rand« , enregistrée le 12 mars 1969, WRVR Radio Studio, New York City, archive sonore, United Methodist General Commission on Archives & History, [48:58-50:00] : « Remember what the word [universe] means: it means everything which exists. You do not explain “everything that exists”. Existence does not require explanation. Because, observe the following contraction: where do you stand, intellectually, if you are going to explain existence? Where are you, the observer? You are part of existence. Existence exists and only existence exists. Existence, as such, does not require explanation, it requires study. We need to know what exists, what is its nature, what are the laws of nature… But the attempt to explain the source of existence or of the universe is a contradiction in terms. »
• BRANDEN Barbara, « The Fallacy of the “Stolen Concept” » dans Principles of Efficient Thinking, Lecture 9, 1962 : « Certainly, in order for a “why?” to be meaningful, the fact of Existence must precede it and be granted […]. But in order to inquire, “Why did it happen that Existence exists, rather than the opposite?”, the questioner, in effect, has to, standing in Existence, steal the concept of “why?”, then leap out of Existence into some neutral realm, which is neither Existence nor Non-Existence, and from this point of reference, looking impartially over the whole sphere of things, say, “Now, why is it that Existence is here?” It’s a question which one has to step outside of Existence in order to ask. »

[25:54] Une philosophie athée

• Night Call, « The Philosophy of Ayn Rand » (Ibid) [47:50] : « — Do you include in your philosophy any dimension of existence outside this human mortal life? Is there room in your system of thought for a theistic being? — No there is not. I include in my system of philosophy only that which man can grasp, perceive, identify, and demonstrate by means of reason. »
• Lettre à Martin Larson du 15 juillet 1960, dans BERLINER Michael S. (éd.), Letters of Ayn Rand (op. cit.), « The Later Years », p. 577-578 : « I do not call myself an “Atheist” as an identification of my metaphysical position; I call myself an “Objectivist.” But I do use the term “Atheist” in the appropriate context, such as, for instance, in answer to the queries of religionists or of those who spread verbal confusion by claiming that “a belief in natural laws is a belief in God,” etc.
• Lettre à Bruce Alger du 4 février 1963, dans BERLINER Michael S. (éd.), Letters of Ayn Rand (op. cit.), « The Later Years », p. 606 : « I am an intransigent atheist, though not a militant one. This means that I am not fighting against religion—I am fighting for reason. »

[26:21] Le concept de « Dieu » contredit les axiomes

• Lettre à Isabel Paterson du 4 août 1945, dans BERLINER Michael S. (éd.), Letters of Ayn Rand (op. cit.), « Letters to Isabel Paterson », p. 184 : « My main argument is that the conception of God — or such as I have ever heard or read – denies every conception of the human mind. What is omnipotence? What is infinity? What is a being which is limitless — when the basic conception of existence in man’s form of consciousness is the conception of an entity — which means a limit? An entity is that which other entities are not. What is an entity which is everything? »
• PEIKOFF Leonard, Objectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand (op. cit.),  chap. 1, « Reality », p. 31 : « The idea of the “supernatural” is an assault on everything man knows about reality. It is a contradiction of every essential of a rational metaphysics. It represents a rejection of the basic axioms of philosophy (or, in the case of primitive men, a failure to grasp them). […] Is God the creator of the universe? Not if existence has primacy over consciousness. Is God the designer of the universe? Not if A is A. The alternative to “design” is not “chance.” It is causality. »
• GOTTHELF Allan, On Ayn Rand (op. cit.), chap. 5 « Metaphysics (continued) », p. 49 : « It is not only that there are no good arguments for the existence of God, Ayn Rand held. The very concept of “God” violates the axioms as well. “Omnipotence”, “omniscience », and “infinity” (as used for God) all violate identity. That God knows, and acts, without means violates causality. And so on. Most fundamental of all, to postulate a God as creator of the universe is to postulate a consciousness that could exist without anything to be conscious of. This, as we have seen, violates existence and consciousness. »

[26:59] L’univers ne peut avoir de cause

• BRANDEN Nathaniel dans The Objectivist Newsletter, vol. 1, n° 5, mai 1962, « This leads to the second and more fundamental fallacy in this argument. The assumption that the universe as a whole requires a causal explanation. It does not. The universe is the total of that which exists. Within the universe, the emergence of new entities can be explained in terms of the actions of entities that already exist. […] All actions presuppose the existence of entities — and all emergences of new entities presuppose the existence of entities that caused their emergence. All causality presupposes the existence of something that acts as a cause. To demand a cause for all of existence is to demand a contradiction: if the cause exists, it is part of existence; if it does not exist, it cannot be a cause. Nothing cannot be the cause of something. Nothing does not exist. Causality presupposes existence, existence does not presuppose causality: there can be no cause “outside” of existence or “anterior” to it. The forms of existence may change and evolve, but the fact of existence is the irreducible primary at the base of all causal chains. Existence — not “God” — is the First Cause. »
• PEIKOFF Leonard, Objectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand (op. cit.),  chap. 1, « Reality », p. 16 : « The concept of “cause” is inapplicable to the universe; by definition, there is nothing outside the totality to act as a cause. The universe simply is; it is an irreducible primary. »

[27:24] Ce que signifie la primauté de la conscience

• « The opposite view is the Primacy of Consciousness, and this is the view that consciousness in some form comes first, and it is the metaphysical primary, the irreducible entity that sets the terms for reality. Reality is somehow an offshoot, or derivative, or byproduct, of the activities or content of consciousness. On this view, consciousness has magical powers, and it has the power to produce or shape reality. Facts are not what they are, but rather whatever the ruling consciousness chooses them to be. »

[27:39] Prégnance de l’idéalisme métaphysique en philosophie

• Parmi les idéalistes (au sens métaphysique) les plus célèbres et influents de la philosophie occidentale, on peut citer : Platon, Plotin, Saint Augustin, Berkeley, Kant, Hegel, Fichte, Schelling, Schopenhauer, Bradley. Au Moyen Âge, l’idéalisme a imprégné la philosophie chrétienne à travers le néoplatonisme ; et à l’ère moderne, il a donné lieu à plusieurs courants nationaux (allemand, britannique, français, italien). Il se retrouve également dans les philosophies orientales, notamment nombre de courants bouddhistes ou hindouistes.

[28:12] La réalité n’est pas un consensus ou un compromis

• « For the New Intellectual », dans For the New Intellectual (op. cit.), p. 31 : « If there is no such thing as an objective reality, men’s metaphysical choice is whether the selfish, dictatorial whims of an individual or the democratic whims of a collective are to shape that plastic goo which the ignorant call “reality”; therefore [the Kantian Pragmatists] decided that objectivity consists of collective subjectivism […] that whatever people wish to be true, is true, whatever people wish to exist, does exist, and anyone who holds any firm convictions of his own is an arbitrary, mystic dogmatist, since reality is indeterminate and people determine its actual nature. »
• PEIKOFF Leonard, Objectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand (op. cit.),  chap. 1, « Reality », p. 22 : « According to the social version [of the primacy of consciousness], no one individual is potent enough to create a universe or abrogate the law of identity, but a group—mankind as a whole, a particular society, a nation, a state, a race, a sex, an economic class—can do the trick. In popular terms: one Frenchman alone can’t bend reality to his desires, but fifty million of them are irresistible. Epistemologically, this variant leads to collective surveys—a kind of group introspection—as the means to truth; knowledge is said to rest on a consensus among thinkers, a consensus that results not from each individual’s perception of external reality, but from subjective mental structures or contents that happen to be shared by the group’s members. »

[28:27] La métaphysique sociale

• « The Argument from intimidation » dans The Virtue of Selfishness (op. cit.), chap. 19, p. 165 : « A social metaphysician is one who regards the consciousness of other men as superior to his own and to the facts of reality. It is to a social metaphysician that the moral appraisal of himself by others is a primary concern which supersedes truth, facts, reason, logic. The disapproval of others is so shatteringly terrifying to him that nothing can withstand its impact within his consciousness; thus he would deny the evidence of his own eyes and invalidate his own consciousness for the sake of any stray charlatan’s moral sanction. It is only a social metaphysician who could conceive of such absurdity as hoping to win an intellectual argument by hinting: “But people won’t like you!” »

[28:36] Citation de Rand sur la primauté de l’existence

• « The Metaphysical Versus the Man-Made« , dans Philosophy: Who Needs It (op. cit.), chap. 3, p. 24-25 : « The primacy of existence (of reality) is the axiom that existence exists, i.e., that the universe exists independent of consciousness (of any consciousness), that things are what they are, that they possess a specific nature, an identity. The epistemological corollary is the axiom that consciousness is the faculty of perceiving that which exists—and that man gains knowledge of reality by looking outward. The rejection of these axioms represents a reversal: the primacy of consciousness—the notion that the universe has no independent existence, that it is the product of a consciousness (either human or divine or both). The epistemological corollary is the notion that man gains knowledge of reality by looking inward (either at his own consciousness or at the revelations it receives from another, superior consciousness). The source of this reversal is the inability or unwillingness fully to grasp the difference between one’s inner state and the outer world, i.e., between the perceiver and the perceived (thus blending consciousness and existence into one indeterminate package-deal). This crucial distinction is not given to man automatically; it has to be learned. It is implicit in any awareness, but it has to be grasped conceptually and held as an absolute. As far as can be observed, infants and savages do not grasp it (they may, perhaps, have some rudimentary glimmer of it). Very few men ever choose to grasp it and fully to accept it. The majority keep swinging from side to side, implicitly recognizing the primacy of existence in some cases and denying it in others, adopting a kind of hit-or-miss, rule-ofthumb epistemological agnosticism, through ignorance and/or by intention—the result of which is the shrinking of their intellectual range, i.e., of their capacity to deal with abstractions. And although few people today believe that the singing of mystic incantations will bring rain, most people still regard as valid an argument such as: “If there is no God, who created the universe?” To grasp the axiom that existence exists, means to grasp the fact that nature, i.e., the universe as a whole, cannot be created or annihilated, that it cannot come into or go out of existence. Whether its basic constituent elements are atoms, or subatomic particles, or some yet undiscovered forms of energy, it is not ruled by a consciousness or by will or by chance, but by the Law of Identity. All the countless forms, motions, combinations and dissolutions of elements within the universe—from a floating speck of dust to the formation of a galaxy to the emergence of life—are caused and determined by the identities of the elements involved. Nature is the metaphysically given—i.e., the nature of nature is outside the power of any volition. »

[32:29] « Ne prenez pas vos désirs pour des réalités »

• « Introducing Objectivism » dans The Voice of Reason (New York: Meridian, 1990), chap 1, p. 3 : « At a sales conference at Random House, preceding the publication of Atlas Shrugged, one of the book salesmen asked me whether I could present the essence of my philosophy while standing on one foot. I did, as follows: 1. Metaphysics: Objective Reality […] If you want this translated into simple language, it would read: […] “Wishing won’t make it so.” »

[32:36] L’Objectivisme n’est pas matérialiste

• Lettre à Nathaniel Blumenthal du 13 janvier 1950, dans BERLINER Michael S. (éd.), Letters of Ayn Rand (op. cit.), « Letters to a philosopher », p. 526-527 : : « Man is a being endowed with consciousness—an attribute which matter does not possess. His consciousness is the free, non-material element in him. »
• « Censorship Local and Express » dans Philosophy: Who Needs It (op. cit.), chap. 15, p. 187 : [I]t is the conservatives who are predominantly religionists, who proclaim the superiority of the soul over the body, who represent what I call the “mystics of spirit.” And it is the liberals who are predominantly materialists, who regard man as an aggregate of meat, and who represent what I call the “mystics of muscle.” »
• « Faith and Force: The Destroyers of the Modern World » dans Philosophy: Who Needs It (op. cit.), chap. 15, p. 187 : « Communists, like all materialists, are neo-mystics: it does not matter whether one rejects the mind in favor of revelations or in favor of conditioned reflexes. The basic premise and the results are the same. »
• PEIKOFF Leonard, Objectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand (op. cit.),  chap. 1, « Reality », p. 33 : « Materialists—men such as Democritus, Hobbes, Marx, Skinner—champion nature but deny the reality or efficacy of consciousness. Consciousness, in this view, is either a myth or a useless byproduct of brain or other motions. In Objectivist terms, this amounts to the advocacy of existence without consciousness. It is the denial of man’s faculty of cognition and therefore of all knowledge. »

[33:05] Intégration du corps et de l’esprit

• Journals of Ayn Rand (éd. David Harriman, préface de Leonard Peikoff, New York: Plume, 1999), part. 4, « Atlas Shrugged« , chap. 14, « Notes While Writing Galt’s Speech », p. 663 : « Man is an entity of mind and body, an indivisible union of two elements: of consciousness and matter. Matter is that which one perceives, consciousness is that which perceives it; your fundamental act of perception is an indivisible whole consisting of both; to deny, to [separate] or to equate them is to contradict the nature of your perception, to contradict the axiom of existence, to contradict your basic definitions and to invalidate whatever concepts you might attempt to hold thereafter. »
• Atlas Shrugged (op. cit.), p. 1026 : « They have cut man in two, setting one half against the other. They have taught him that his body and his consciousness are two enemies engaged in deadly conflict, two antagonists of opposite natures, contradictory claims, incompatible needs, that to benefit one is to injure the other, that his soul belongs to a supernatural realm, but his body is an evil prison holding it in bondage to this earth—and that the good is to defeat his body, to undermine it by years of patient struggle, digging his way to that glorious jail-break which leads into the freedom of the grave. They have taught man that he is a hopeless misfit made of two elements, both symbols of death. A body without a soul is a corpse, a soul without a body is a ghost—yet such is their image of man’s nature: the battleground of a struggle between a corpse and a ghost, a corpse endowed with some evil volition of its own and a ghost endowed with the knowledge that everything known to man is non-existent, that only the unknowable exists. »
• Ibid, p. 1027 : « As products of the split between man’s soul and body, there are two kinds of teachers of the Morality of Death: the mystics of spirit and the mystics of muscle, whom you call the spiritualists and the materialists, those who believe in consciousness without existence and those who believe in existence without consciousness. »

[33:24] Citation d’Ayn Rand sur l’identité et le libre arbitre

• MAYHEW Robert (éd.), Ayn Rand Answers (New York, New American Library / Penguin Group USA Inc., 2005), chap. 3, p. 151-153 : « It’s almost blindingly self-evident that the philosophical fundamental being ignored here is the Law of Identity. This is a good example of what questions you need not bother answering, since they contradict philosophical fundamentals. The guideline for anyone tempted to ask such a question is: Do not rewrite reality. On what grounds did someone decide that choice contradicts identity? That is an arbitrary construct of determinism. I first encountered a similar issue in college. Some professor declared: “We must decide whether we’re spiritualists or materialists, because the universe cannot contain opposite elements. So either everything is spirit or everything is matter.” I was about sixteen, and thought: “Of course, I’m for matter.” That seemed the rational answer. It took me a couple of years before I asked the following question: “On what grounds did he decide that reality must be one or the other?” Then I discovered the principle of rewriting reality, and that was very helpful. You’d be surprised how many errors consist of rewriting reality. Kant is the archetype. He does it more, and more openly, than most philosophers. He decides (on a primitive, rationalistic basis, à la Heraclitus and Parmenides) what reality has to be, and if it doesn’t correspond to his demands, then reality is wrong—not his demands. You must ask on what grounds do we decide what reality has to be. You know that reality cannot contain contradictions, and you know that one of the first things you learn, after infancy, is that there are inanimate objects and conscious entities. You know yourself—that you have a body and consciousness. That is the empirical self-evident proof that there is both matter and consciousness in the universe. All of your knowledge of man’s nature rests on these primaries—that existence exists and consciousness exists. If you drop either of these axioms, you’ll encounter contradictions everywhere. And you’ll be guilty of using a stolen concept if you claim that the universe is all consciousness or all matter. This is the attempt to prescribe what you think in logic should be the nature of reality. But you have no right to any concept of reality or logic unless the material of your concepts came from reality—from the evidence of your senses. By what reasoning does anyone claim that identity means only material identity, and that human consciousness contradicts the Law of Identity because it operates by choice? Free will is self-evident through observation. Further, it can be demonstrated by as many arguments as you care to muster. Everything you observe about human consciousness tells you that it operates by choice: not only your introspection, but also your observation of other people. So you put yourself in this position: You observe that matter exists and that consciousness exists, and that consciousness operates by choice. Is it a contradiction to hold that we have firm identities and the capacity for choice? Ask yourself: “Choice about what?” We don’t have a choice about our own nature—its identity is firm —but about our action. There are no grounds in reality for claiming that freedom of action contradicts the Law of Identity. This is what I mean by reducing questions to see whether they correspond to or contradict basic axioms. »

Le libre arbitre

[38:20] Le libre-arbitre comme le choix de penser

• Atlas Shrugged (op. cit.), p. 1017 : « That which you call your soul or spirit is your consciousness, and that which you call “free will” is your mind’s freedom to think or not, the only will you have, your only freedom, the choice that controls all the choices you make and determines your life and your character. »
• Interview d’Ayn Rand dans Playboy, mars 1964, p. 42 : « You see, I use the term free will in a totally different sense from the one usually attached to it. Free will consists of man’s ability to think or not to think. The act of thinking is man’s primary act of choice. »

[38:40] La pensée n’est pas automatique

• Atlas Shrugged (op. cit.), p. 1012 : « But to think is an act of choice. The key to what you so recklessly call “human nature,” the open secret you live with, yet dread to name, is the fact that man is a being of volitional consciousness. Reason does not work automatically; thinking is not a mechanical process; the connections of logic are not made by instinct. The function of your stomach, lungs or heart is automatic; the function of your mind is not. In any hour and issue of your life, you are free to think or to evade that effort. »
• Ibid, p. 1013 : « Man has been called a rational being, but rationality is a matter of choice… »
• « For the New Intellectual », dans For the New Intellectual (op. cit.), p. 8 : « The process of abstraction, and of concept-formation is a process of reason, of thought; it is not automatic nor instinctive nor involuntary nor infallible. Man has to initiate it, to sustain it and to bear responsibility for its results. »

[38:55] La pensée ne peut être forcée

• « Our Cultural Value-deprivation » dans The Voice of Reason (op. cit.), chap 11, p. 102 : « The choice to think or not is volitional. […] A social environment can neither force a man to think nor prevent him from thinking. But a social environment can offer incentives or impediments; it can make the exercise of one’s rational faculty easier or harder; it can encourage thinking and penalize evasion or vice versa. »
• « The Metaphysical Versus the Man-Made« , dans Philosophy: Who Needs It (op. cit.), chap. 3, p. 31 : « [B]y its metaphysically given nature, a man’s volition is outside the power of other men. What the unalterable basic constituents are to nature, the attribute of a volitional consciousness is to the entity “man.” Nothing can force a man to think. Others may offer him incentives or impediments, rewards or punishments, they may destroy his brain by drugs or by the blow of a club, but they cannot order his mind to function: this is in his exclusive, sovereign power. »

[39:57] Compatibilité du libre arbitre et de la causalité

• Lettre à John Hospers du 27 novembre 1960, dans BERLINER Michael S. (éd.), Letters of Ayn Rand (op. cit.), « Letters to a philosopher », p. 514 : « I trust that you do not confuse my theory of free will with the traditional theory of the mystics who equate the “free” with the causeless or the insane, in the sense of a spontaneously generated whim. »
• BRANDEN Nathaniel, « Volition and the Law of Causality » dans The Objectivist, vol. 5, n° 3, mars 1966, p. 11 : « This freedom of choice is not a negation of causality, but a category of it, a category that pertains to man. A process of thought is not causeless, it is caused by man. The actions possible to an entity are determined by the entity that acts — and the nature of man (and of man’s mind) is such that it necessitates the choice between focusing and non-focusing, between thinking and non-thinking. »
• PEIKOFF Leonard, Objectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand (op. cit.),  chap. 2, « Sense Perception and Volition », p. 65 : « Man’s actions do have causes; he does choose a course of behavior for a reason—but this does not make the course determined or the choice unreal. It does not, because man himself decides what are to be the governing reasons. Man chooses the causes that shape his actions. »

[40:28] L’Objectivisme n’est pas indéterministe

• « Properties, Actions, and Causality » dans Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology (op. cit.), Excerpts from the Epistemology Workshops, p. 288 : « I wanted to stress that one cannot claim causeless actions, or actions contrary to the nature of the interacting entities. I wanted to stress that actions cannot be inexplicable and causeless. If the cause lies in the nature of an entity, then it cannot do something other than what its nature makes possible. »
• PEIKOFF Leonard, Objectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand (op. cit.),  chap. 2, « Sense Perception and Volition », p. 68 : « The indeterminist notion that freedom means a blind, senseless lurch—a so-called « Epicurean swerve »—is without justification. But this does not imply determinism. In regard to action, also, man is a sovereign entity, a self-mover. His inviolable freedom lies in the issue: what kind of cause moves him—long-range purpose or out-of-context promptings? Once again, what underlies such an alternative is a single root choice: to be conscious or not. »
• PEIKOFF Leonard, « The Analytic-Synthetic Dichotomy », dans Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology (op. cit.), p. 110 : « Choice, however, is not chance. Volition is not an exception to the Law of Causality; it is a type of causation. »
• Journals of Ayn Rand (op. cit.), Part. 1, « Early Projects », chap. 3, « First Philosophical Journal », entrée du 9 mai 1934, p. 68 : « The will does not have to be without reason, or motivation, in order to be free. One’s act may be motivated by an outside reason, but the choice of that reason is our free will. »

[40:50] L’Objectivisme n’est pas compatibiliste

• RHEINS Jason G., « Objectivist Metaphysics: The Primacy of Existence » dans A Companion to Ayn Rand (op. cit.), p. 260 : « According to compatibilist theories, determinism and freedom are compatible, because “freedom” is understood as a certain way in which one’s actions are predetermined. According to various compatibilist theories, we are free if our actions are predetermined by internal rather than external factors, or if they or the desires that produce them are in accordance with our (predetermined) higher‐order desires, or if one has the power to do what one (predeterminatedly) wants to do. Against this, Rand maintains that metaphysical freedom (and moral responsibility) presuppose an agent being able to act differently than he does (even if all other factors are the same). This is referred to by contemporary philosophers as “the principle of alternative possibilities.” »

[41:05] La volition est axiomatique

• PEIKOFF Leonard, Objectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand (op. cit.),  chap. 2, « Sense Perception and Volition », p. 70 : « The principle of volition is a philosophic axiom, with all the features this involves. It is a primary—a starting point of conceptual cognition and of the subject of epistemology… »

[41:13] Auto-réfutation du déterminisme

• Journals of Ayn Rand (op. cit.), Part. 3, « Transition Between Novels », chap. 8, « The Moral Basis of Individualism », entrée du 18 septembre 1943, p. 256 : « It is the doctrine which denies the existence of the rational faculty in man. It holds choice as an illusion and reason as a by-product of physical environment, nutrition and “conditioning,” operating without volition, automatically and unalterably. There is a catch in that doctrine, however. Its proponents claim to have reached it by rational deduction. They urge us to take action upon it, to improve our physical environment in order to improve the by-product, our brain, and they beg us to take such action through a conscious decision of—our rational faculty. »
• BRANDEN Nathaniel, « The Contradiction of Determinism » dans The Objectivist Newsletter, vol. 2, n° 5, mai 1963, p. 19 : « If his capacity to judge is not free, there is no way for a man to discriminate between his beliefs and those of a raving lunatic. But then how did the advocates of determinism acquire their knowledge? What is its validation? »
• PEIKOFF Leonard, Objectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand (op. cit.),  chap. 2, « Sense Perception and Volition », p. 71 : « The determinist’s position amounts to the following. “My mind does not automatically conform to facts, yet I have no choice about its course. I have no way to choose reality to be my guide as against subjective feeling, social pressure, or the falsifications inherent in being only semiconscious. If and when I distort the evidence through sloppiness or laziness, or place popularity above logic, or evade out of fear, or hide my evasions from myself under layers of rationalizations and lies, I have to do it, even if I realize at the time how badly I am acting. Whatever the irrationalities that warp and invalidate my mind’s conclusion on any issue, they are irresistible, like every event in my history, and could not have been otherwise.” If such were the case, a man could not rely on his own judgment. He could claim nothing as objective knowledge, including the theory of determinism. »

[41:59] Le libre arbitre est lié à la raison

• « What is Romanticism? » dans The Romantic Manifesto, (op. cit.), chap. 6, p. 97 : « The still deeper issue, the fact that the faculty of reason is the faculty of volition, was not known at the time, and the various theories of free will were for the most part of an anti-rational character, thus reinforcing the association of volition with mysticism. »

L’homme face à la réalité métaphysique

[42:39] La prémisse de l’univers bienveillant

• Journals of Ayn Rand (op. cit.), part. 4, « Atlas Shrugged », chap. 13, « Notes While Writing: 1947-1952 », entrée du 8 mars 1947, p. 555 : « But now man must remain convinced consciously of the validity of what he’s learned in that process. It implies: free will, self-confidence (confidence in one’s own judgment), self-respect (the conviction that the preservation of his life and the achievement of his happiness are values, are good), and a benevolent universe in which he can achieve happiness (if he remains realistic, that is, true to reality observed by his reason). If his desires are derived from and based on reality correctly observed—they will be achievable in this universe. »
• Atlas Shrugged (op. cit.), p. 759 : « [W]e do not hold the belief that this earth is a realm of misery where man is doomed to destruction. We do not think that tragedy is our natural fate and we do not live in chronic dread of disaster. We do not expect disaster until we have specific reason to expect it—and when we encounter it, we are free to fight it. It is not happiness, but suffering that we consider unnatural. It is not success, but calamity that we regard as the abnormal exception in human life. »
• Interview biographique d’Ayn Rand #6 conduite par Barbara & Nathaniel Branden (Ayn Rand Archives), 1961, transcript, p. 206 : « Benevolent in the sense of benevolent universe and an optimistic view of life, if you put it that way. That life is to be enjoyed and that that’s what one has to fight for, the right to enjoy it. I was enormously contemptuous of any book or theories that would preach hopelessness, metaphysical hopelessness. You know, the Augustine viewpoint, from that on up. Any variant of that life is only suffering, I would have fought. That I would have known even then. »

[43:25] La prémisse de l’univers malveillant

• MAYHEW Robert (éd.), Ayn Rand Answers (op. cit.), chap. 4, p. 191 : « Her error is the malevolent universe premise: the belief that the good has no chance on earth, that it is doomed to lose and that evil is metaphysically powerful. Many people make that mistake, and the reason is that they form their conclusions by statistical impressions. As a person grows up, he looks around and certainly sees more evil than virtue. So he is disappointed more often than pleased; he’s often hurt and sees a lot of injustice. And with each generation, given the present culture, it gets worse and worse. By emotional overgeneralization from these first impressions, a great many people whose basic premises are good decide to become (in effect) philosophical subjectivists. They conclude that their values can never be shared by others or communicated to others, and therefore that they can never win in reality.
• « The Ethics of Emergencies » dans The Virtue of Selfishness (op. cit.), chap. 3, p. 56 : « The altruist ethics is based on a « malevolent universe » metaphysics, on the theory that man, by his very nature, is helpless and doomed—that success, happiness, achievement are impossible to him—that emergencies, disasters, catastrophes are the norm of his life and that his primary goal is to combat them. As the simplest empirical refutation of that metaphysics—as evidence of the fact that the material universe is not inimical to man and that catastrophes are the exception, not the rule of his existence—observe the fortunes made by insurance companies.

[43:50] Un jugement de valeur métaphysique

• « Philosophy and Sense of Life » dans The Romantic Manifesto (op. cit.), chap. 2, p. 17 : « [A fundamental view of man’s nature] involves the answers to such questions as whether the universe is knowable or not, whether man has the power of choice or not, whether he can achieve his goals in life or not. The answers to such questions are « metaphysical value-judgments, » since they form the base of ethics. »

[44:13] Équivoque possible sur la « bienveillance » de l’univers

• PEIKOFF Leonard, Objectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand (op. cit.),  chap. 9, « Happiness », p. 342 : « “Benevolence” in this context is not a synonym for kindness ; it does not mean that the universe cares about man or wishes to help him. The universe has no desires; it simply is. Man must care about and adapt to it, not the other way around. If he does adapt to it, however, then the universe is “benevolent” in another sense: “auspicious to human life.” »

[44:36] Harmonie du corps et de l’esprit

• Atlas Shrugged (op. cit.), p. 1019 : « Integrity is the recognition of the fact […] that man is an indivisible entity, an integrated unit of two attributes: of matter and consciousness, and that he may permit no breach between body and mind, between action and thought, between his life and his convictions »
• « For the New Intellectual », dans For the New Intellectual (op. cit.), p. 51 : « The New Intellectual will be the man who lives up to the exact meaning of his title: a man who is guided by his intellect—not a zombie guided by feelings, instincts, urges, wishes, whims or revelations. Ending the rule of Attila and the Witch Doctor, he will discard the basic premise that made them possible: the soul-body dichotomy. He will discard its irrational conflicts and contradictions, such as: mind versus heart, thought versus action, reality versus desire, the practical versus the moral. He will be an integrated man, that is: a thinker who is a man of action. He will know that ideas divorced from consequent action are fraudulent, and that action divorced from ideas is suicidal. »
• PEIKOFF Leonard, Objectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand (op. cit.),  chap. 6, « Man », p. 195 : « The metaphysical fact about man that underlies these truths is that man is not a battlefield of contending dimensions, spiritual and physical. He is, in Ayn Rand’s words, “an indivisible entity, an integrated unit of two attributes: of matter and consciousness.” Consciousness in his case takes the form of mind, i.e., a conceptual faculty; matter, of a certain kind of organic structure. Each of these attributes is indispensable to the other and to the total entity. The mind acquires knowledge and defines goals; the body translates these conclusions into action. »

[45:05] Les données métaphysique et l’œuvre de l’homme

• « The Metaphysical Versus the Man-Made« , dans Philosophy: Who Needs It (op. cit.), chap. 3, p. 27 : « It is the metaphysically given that must be accepted: it cannot be changed. It is the man-made that must never be accepted uncritically: it must be judged, then accepted or rejected and changed when necessary. Man is not omniscient or infallible: he can make innocent errors through lack of knowledge, or he can lie, cheat and fake. The man-made may be a product of genius, perceptiveness, ingenuity—or it may be a product of stupidity, deception, malice, evil. One man may be right and everyone else wrong, or vice versa (or any numerical division in between). Nature does not give man any automatic guarantee of the truth of his judgments (and this is a metaphysically given fact, which must be accepted). Who, then, is to judge? Each man, to the best of his ability and honesty. What is his standard of judgment? The metaphysically given. »

[46:35] Citation de Francis Bacon

• BACON Francis, Novum Organum (1620), Livre I, Aphorisme 3 : « Human knowledge and human power meet in one; for where the cause is not known the effect cannot be produced. Nature to be commanded must be obeyed; and that which in contemplation is as the cause is in operation as the rule. »

L’univers, l’espace et le temps

[46:46] Philosophie et cosmologie

• Journals of Ayn Rand (op. cit.), part. 5 « Final Years », chap. 16, « Two Possible Books », entrée du 19 juin 1958, p. 698 : « “Cosmology” has to be thrown out of philosophy. When this is done, the conflict between “rationalism” and “empiricism” will be wiped out—or, rather, the error that permitted the nonsense of such a conflict will be wiped out. »
• « Entities and Their Makeup » dans Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology (op. cit.), Excerpts from the Epistemology Workshops, p. 273 : « Actually, do you know what we can ascribe to the universe as such, apart from scientific discovery? Only those fundamentals that we can grasp about existence. »

[47:56] Le temps et l’espace comme des relations

• Séance de questions-réponses dans « Of Living Death » (conférence au Ford Hall Forum, 1968), enregistrement YouTube [01:48:05] : « Our position would, in effect, be Aristotelian. Aristotle position is that (this is not his statement, this is our statement, but the issue is the same) there is no such thing as independent time or space. The universe is finite, and the concept of time applies to a relationship between entities. Specifically a measurement of motion which is a change of relationship between entities within the universe, not outside. Time cannot exist by itself. It exists only inside the universe, but it does not apply to the universe as a whole, because time is merely a measurement of motion, a change of relationship between entities within the universe. Now by “universe” we mean the total of that which exists. There is not relationship to anything outside itself that it could have—no motion, no change, no time—if you think of it as the totality. »
• PEIKOFF, « The Objectivist Metaphysics: Axioms, Causality and the Primacy of Existence », dans The Philosophy of Objectivism (séminaire, 1976), leçon 2, questions-réponses, enregistrement Youtube [02:26:37] : « Space, like time, is a relational concept. It does not designate entity, and it exists only within the universe. The universe is not in space any more that it is in time. […] To be in space or in a position means to have a certain relationship to a boundary which contain the object. […] Places are in the universe. »

[48:36] Éternité de l’univers

• « The Metaphysical Versus the Man-Made« , dans Philosophy: Who Needs It (op. cit.), chap. 3, p. 25 : « To grasp the axiom that existence exists, means to grasp the fact that nature, i.e., the universe as a whole, cannot be created or annihilated, that it cannot come into or go out of existence. »
• Interview d’Ayn Rand pour The Phil Donahue Show (1980), enregistrement YouTube « Ayn Rand Phil Donahue Interview Part 3 of 5 » [06:15] : »… the universe—and remember that the universe is everything that exists—has always been here. Because you cannot discuss or know anything about what was here before anything existed. »
• PEIKOFF Leonard, « The Objectivist Metaphysics: Axioms, Causality and the Primacy of Existence », dans The Philosophy of Objectivism (séminaire, 1976), leçon 2, questions-réponses, enregistrement Youtube [02:24:17] : « “Eternal” and “everlasting” are not synonymous terms, literally. “Eternal” means « out of time », not in time — and that is literally what the universe is. It has no beginning or end because it does not exist in time. On the contrary—as Aristotle pointed out—time exists in the universe. […] Time is a measurement of motion. It’s a kind of relationship. It applies within a part of the universe, when you define a standard… […] [T]he universe is eternal in the literal sense, meaning: non-temporal, out of time. And therefore there is no question of it existing for an infinite period of time. »
• PEIKOFF Leonard, Advanced Seminars on Objectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand (séminaire, 1990), leçon 2, enregistrement YouTube [00:20:10] : « Objectivism does not say the universe “always” existed if you mean by “always” a temporal concept, because the universe is not in time. Time is in the universe. »

[49:46] Éternité et théorie du Big Bang

• RHEINS Jason G., « Objectivist Metaphysics: The Primacy of Existence » dans A Companion to Ayn Rand (op. cit.), p. 252 : « This is not a denial of any specific claims about the observable history of the cosmos, but of faulty metaphysical claims. Consider the “Big Bang,” which is currently thought to have occurred 13.8 billion years ago. Rand’s metaphysics is silent on the question of whether or not an ancient expansion is responsible for the present state of the universe or those parts of it that are currently observable; but it does say that if so, it was an expansion of something that already existed. The idea of the universe exploding into existence from nothing is incoherent, and in fact it is not something that is (or could be) supported by physical evidence; rather, it is a metaphysical view or interpretation that certain people (some of whom happen to be physicists) have about the significance of an event for which there is physical evidence. If there was a Big Bang, metaphysics tells us that the universe existed before it in some form. It cannot tell us in what specific form it existed: for example, it cannot tell us whether the Big Bang was preceded by a “Big Crunch” (as some physicists believe) or even an infinite number of such crunches and bangs. It can only tell us that, if there was such a crunch or if there is one to come, it will not be a collapse into non‐existence. »

[50:32] Le « rien » comme relation

• « Axiomatic Concepts » dans Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology (op. cit.), chap. 6, p. 58 : « It may be said that existence can be differentiated from non-existence; but non-existence is not a fact, it is the absence of a fact, it is a derivative concept pertaining to a relationship, i.e., a concept which can be formed or grasped only in relation to some existent that has ceased to exist. »
• PEIKOFF Leonard, « The Objectivist Metaphysics: Axioms, Causality and the Primacy of Existence », dans The Philosophy of Objectivism (séminaire, 1976), leçon 2, enregistrement YouTube [02:34:50] : « The concept of a vacuum, in the sense of the absolute zero, is invalid. […] There is no nothing, only something. The concept « nothing » is only justifiable in a relational sense, to designate the absence of something particular. […] It means simply the absence of a specific kind of thing. It does not mean what Heidegger and his ilk called « Das Nichts ». […] There is no “nothing”. »

[51:17] La réification du néant

• « Axiomatic Concepts » dans Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology (op. cit.), chap. 6, p. 60 : « One of the consequences (a vulgar variant of concept stealing, prevalent among avowed mystics and irrationalists) is a fallacy I call the Reification of the Zero. It consists of regarding “nothing” as a thing, as a special, different kind of existent. (For example, see Existentialism.) This fallacy breeds such symptoms as the notion that presence and absence, or being and non-being, are metaphysical forces of equal power, and that being is the absence of non-being. E.g., “Nothingness is prior to being.” (Sartre)—‘‘Human finitude is the presence of the not in the being of man.” (William Barrett)—‘‘Nothing is more real than nothing.” (Samuel Beckett)—“Das Nichts nichtet” or ““Nothing noughts.” (Heidegger). »

[51:30] Sartre sur le néant

• SARTRE Jean-Paul, L’Être et le néant (édition corrigée avec index par Arlette Elkaïm-Sartre, Paris, Gallimard, coll. « Tel », 1943), Première partie, chap. I, sect. II, p. 41 : « La question peut se poser en ces termes : la négation comme structure de la proposition judicative est-elle à l’origine du néant — ou, au contraire, est-ce le néant, comme structure du réel, qui est l’origine et le fondement de la négation ? »
• Ibid, p. 46 : « La condition nécessaire pour qu’il soit possible de dire non, c’est que le non-être soit une présence perpétuelle, en nous et en dehors de nous, c’est que le néant hante l’être. »
• Ibid, section IV, p. 56 : « Le néant ne peut se néantiser que sur fond d’être : si du néant peut être donné, ce n’est ni avant ni après l’être, ni, d’une manière générale, en dehors de l’être, mais c’est au sein même de l’être, en son cœur, comme un ver. »

[52:00] Leibniz se demande pourquoi il y a de l’être

• LEIBNIZ G. W., « Principes de la nature et de la grâce fondés en raison » [1714], §7, dans Œuvres philosophiques de Leibniz, texte établi par Paul Janet, tome 1, Paris, Félix Alcan, 1900, p. 727 : « Ce principe posé, la première question qu’on a droit de faire sera : Pourquoi il y a plutôt quelque chose que rien ? Car le rien est plus simple et plus facile que quelque chose. »

[52:20] Impossibilité de l’infini

• « Three “Hard Cases” » dans Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology (op. cit.), Excerpts from the Epistemology Workshops, p. 148 : « The concept of “infinity” has a very definite purpose in mathematical calculation, and there it is a concept of method. But that isn’t what is meant by the term “infinity” as such. “Infinity” in the metaphysical sense, as something existing in reality, is another invalid concept. The concept “infinity,” in that sense, means something without identity, something not limited by anything, not definable. »
• « Concept Formation » dans Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology (op. cit.), chap. 2, p. 18 : « An arithmetical sequence extends into infinity, without implying that infinity actually exists; such extension means only that whatever number of units does exist, it is to be included in the same sequence. »
• PEIKOFF Leonard, Objectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand (op. cit.),  chap. 1, « Reality », p. 31-32 : « “Infinite” does not mean large; it means larger than any specific quantity, i.e., of no specific quantity. An infinite quantity would be a quantity without identity. But A is A. Every entity, accordingly, is finite; it is limited in the number of its qualities and in their extent; this applies to the universe as well. As Aristotle was the first to observe, the concept of “infinity” denotes merely a potentiality of indefinite addition or subdivision. For example, one can continually subdivide a line; but however many segments one has reached at a given point, there are only that many and no more. The actual is always finite. »

[52:47] L’univers comme fini

• « Entities and Their Makeup » dans Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology (op. cit.), Excerpts from the Epistemology Workshops, p. 273 : « Actually, do you know what we can ascribe to the universe as such, apart from scientific discovery? Only those fundamentals that we can grasp about existence. Not in the sense of switching contexts and ascribing particular characteristics to the universe, but we can say: since everything possesses identity, the universe possesses identity. Since everything is finite, the universe is finite. But we can’t ascribe space or time or a lot of other things to the universe as a whole. »
• PEIKOFF Leonard, « The Objectivist Metaphysics: Axioms, Causality and the Primacy of Existence », dans The Philosophy of Objectivism (séminaire, 1976), leçon 2, enregistrement YouTube [02:28:02] : « [I]s the universe unlimited in size? No. Everything that exist is finite, including the universe. The next question: But what then is outside the universe, if it’s finite? And the answer to that question is that it is invalid. The phrase “outside the universe” has no referent. The universe is everything. “Outside the universe” stands for that which is where everything isn’t. There isn’t even “nothing” out there, there is no “out there”. »
• PEIKOFF Leonard, Advanced Seminars on Objectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand (séminaire, 1990), leçon 6, enregistrement YouTube [01:38:25] : « [The universe] is finite, if by “finite” you mean simply limited. That is the law of identity applied to the quantity. Definitely Objectivism believe the universe is finite. It is not infinite. Simply on the ground of the law of identity, that’s all. Now we don’t have a view on the shape of the universe. I’ve heard that discussed but that is not a part of Objectivism. »

[53:33] Aristote sur l’infini en acte / en puissance

• ARISTOTE, Physique (Flammarion, trad. Pierre Pellegrin, 2002), Livre III, chap. 5-6, p. 187-188 [206a] : « Qu’en acte il n’y ait donc pas de corps infini, c’est manifeste d’après cela. […] [I]l est évident que l’infini en un certain sens existe et en un autre n’existe pas. En fait, “être” se dit d’une part en puissance, d’autre part en entéléchie ; quant à l’infini, il existe d’une part par addition, mais il existe d’autre part aussi par division. Pour ce qui est de la grandeur, on a dit qu’elle n’est pas infinie en acte, mais elle l’est par division ; car il n’est pas difficile de se débarrasser de l’objection des segments indivisibles. Il reste donc que l’infini existe en puissance. Mais il ne faut pas prendre “étant en puissance” comme dans le cas où on dirait “ceci est une statue en puissance”, et comprendre que de même qu’il y aura une statue, de même il y aura aussi un infini qui sera en acte. […] D’une façon générale, c’est en effet ainsi qu’est l’infini : par le fait que sans cesse une chose est saisie après une autre et que ce qui est saisi est toujours limité mais certes toujours différent… »